This section is intended to provide a background or context to the invention that is recited in the claims. The description herein may include concepts that could be pursued, but are not necessarily ones that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated herein, what is described in this section is not prior art to the description and claims in this application and is not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
Certain abbreviations that may be found in the description and/or in the Figures are herewith defined as follows:    AP access point    DPI deep packet inspection    DSCP DiffSery codepoint    eNB base station    EPC evolved packet core    FDD frequency division duplex    GPRS general packet radio service    GTP GPRS tunneling protocol    HTTP hypertext transport protocol    HTTPS hypertext transport protocol secure    IP internet protocol    ISM industrial, scientific, medical    LTE long term evolution    MAC media access control    PCC policy control and charging    PDCP packet data convergence protocol    PHY physical layer    QCI QoS class of identifier    QoE quality of experience    QoS quality of service    RAN radio access network    RAT radio access technology    RLC radio link control    RRM radio resource manager    SW software    TCP transmission control protocol    TDD time division duplex    ToS type of service    UDP user datagram protocol    UE user equipment    WLAN wireless local area network
LTE Advanced offers higher data rates than prior releases. However, even though spectrum usage efficiency has improved, sometimes this alone cannot provide data rates that may be required by some devices.
One method to achieve even higher data rates is to increase transmission bandwidths over those that can be supported by a single carrier or channel is carrier aggregation (CA), or aggregation. Using carrier aggregation it is possible to utilize more than one carrier and in this way increase the overall transmission bandwidth.
A major goal of carrier aggregation is to provide enhanced and consistent user experience across the cell such as by maximizing a peak data rate and throughput, improving mobility and mitigating relative inefficiencies, and providing load-balancing and thus more consistent QoS of data transmission thanks to the load-balancing.
The exemplary embodiments of the invention as discussed herein work to better control carrier aggregation for devices such as mobile equipment.